Ascent Solar Technologies Tapping European BIPV Roofing Products Market

April 24th, 2008 — Solar Roofing

Colorado based Ascent Solar Technologies, a developer of thin-film photovoltaic (PV) modules is entering into cooperation agreements with Icopal SAS of France and Giscosa Sociedad Limitada of Spain. Both agreements focus on the development of new building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) roofing products intended to be distributed into the European marketplace.

Europe has some of the top solar markets, including Germany and Spain, where demand has surged due to government incentives to install solar panels. A similar agreement was recently struck between Certainteed and SRS Energy in the development of solar roofing tiles in the North American market.

Ascent Solar intends to supply Icopal & Giscosa with product from its existing 1.5 MW production line for the development, testing and certification of the BIPV products. Their intent is to demonstrate scale projects to validate performance and develop market demand for the BIPV roofing products.

Solar Cell RollAscent Solar’s product is manufactured in large roll formats at the module level using a proprietary monolithic laser-patterned cell integration process that enables individual cells to be interconnected during production. This innovation eliminates the time-intensive cell to cell connections and assembly operations required with other technologies to build up modules.

Modules are produced on durable, light weight plastic in contrast to first generation products on metal foils that were developed over 12 years ago. The plastic substrate materials result in extremely high specific power levels, compactness and flexibility that enable the products to be configured into a wide variety of rolls, foldable packs, or traditional module formats.

The large roll formats allow for direct integration into roofing membranes and other building materials and the large sizes significantly reduces the number of modules required for a typical application.

“… Icopal is well positioned to harness the capabilities of our PV modules,” said Joseph McCabe, Vice President of Business Development at Ascent Solar. “We believe that by working with European-based building material companies there is an opportunity to develop higher value BIPV markets in Europe.”

Icopal is a leading manufacturer of waterproofing solutions and building protections, which include supplying bitumen membranes for roofing, waterproofing and civil engineering. Icopal operates worldwide and has 35 manufacturing sites and 91 offices in Europe, North America and Asia.

Giscosa are specialists in the distribution and manufacture of EPDM membranes for roofing. Giscosa intends to incorporate Ascent’s thin-film solar panels into their RubberSun roofing products.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, April 24th, 2008 at 7:45 am and is filed under Solar Roofing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.


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  1. Dow & Global Solar Energy to create Solar Shingle | Roof Info on May 5, 2008 7:26 pm

    [...] Ascent Solar Technologies Tapping European BIPV Roofing Products Market [...]

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